A constructivist approach to popular culture and foreign policy: the case of Turkey and Valley of Wolves: Ambush

Yukaruc, Umut (2017) A constructivist approach to popular culture and foreign policy: the case of Turkey and Valley of Wolves: Ambush. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

In this thesis, I argue that, as a popular text, Valley of the Wolves: Ambush functions as a site
for consent production for foreign policies formed by the AKP elites within the last decade,
through a process of reproduction of state identities, ideologies, and discourses at the level
of narrative. This thesis positions its argument in two fields: Turkish Foreign Policy (TFP)
studies and Popular Culture and World Politics (PCWP) within the larger International
Relations (IR) context. It is interdisciplinary in nature as it also make use of theories around
popular culture. Although scholarship within IR theory and PCWP has done much to explore
issues around representations of politics in popular media (Weldes, 1999a; Nexon and
Neumann, 2006; Van Veeren, 2009; Kiersey and Neumann, 2013), this has frequently focused
on Western examples and narratives such as 24, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Harry Potter,
and so on. In this regard this thesis advances these theories by focusing on a particular
national context and offer an original analysis on Turkey. While doing so, it employs discourse
analysis. It also teases out some of the complexities of the nature and implications of
representation of the TFP by using critical reception. Thisis because thisthesisregards critical
debates around the television series as tools to explore discourses around consent
production. Together with an analysis of the critical reception of the television series, political
discourses around foreign policy are examined in line with the ways in which these policies
are depicted and reproduced by the series. This leads to an intertextual reading of Turkish
state identity and security imaginary and a critical examination of the TFP in the last decade from a constructivist perspective.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies
Depositing User:	Users 2593 not found.
Date Deposited:	08 Nov 2017 11:46
Last Modified:	10 Oct 2022 09:00
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/65370
DOI:

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